World Tour Scheduled to Begin Tomorrow
Whistler, BC CANADA -Eighteen men and five women advanced to compete in the Tylenol Canadian Freeskiing Championships presented by Dynastar World Tour event today on Blackcomb Mountain. After two days and two runs these athletes will join 41 pre qualified athletes who have traveled from 8 countries to compete for $10,000 cash and prizes.
Competition began on Wednesday on a run called "The Bite" with 91 competitors. After an elimination to 60 athletes, today's competition moved to Blackcomb Mountain's "Chainsaw Ridge". High winds and variable clouds shrouded the ridge throughout the day, making visibility an additional obstacle to competitor's strategies. "It's difficult enough to navigate the exposure of these runs on a fair day," said event director David Swanwick, "combine that with flat light and fog and it makes it that much more difficult. "While conditions increased the danger of a technical line, many of the athletes still picked routes through exposed cliffs of 20 to 80 feet. Local Whistler athletes Dominic Balik and Alisha Riley-Roe earned the highest run scores of the day.
The World Tour event gets under way tomorrow in "Ruby Bowl" on Blackcomb Mountain at 10:00am. The Tylenol Canadian Freeskiing Championships is the first stop on the International Free Skiers Association (IFSA) World Tour. www.freeskiers.org The second stop is the Subaru US Freeskiing Championships February 2-6 in Snowbird, Utah, USA. The final event, The North Face Freeride will be held in Les Arcs, France March 1-5. The IFSA was founded in 1996 as the competitor organization of freeskiing events including Big Mountain, Slopestyle, Skiercross, Big Air and Pipe competition.